Judge orders Palestinian freed, U.S. requests stay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A Florida immigration judge Wednesday ordered the release on bond of a Palestinian university professor who has been held as a security threat for over three years without charge, his lawyer said.

But federal attorneys, who claim Mazen Al-Najjar poses a threat to U.S. national security, immediately requested a stay of the judge's order to prevent the Muslim teacher's release.

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) lawyers have described Al-Najjar as a "terrorist," presenting evidence which they said showed he transferred funds to the Islamic Jihad, which the U.S. government lists as an extremist group.

The Board of Immigration Appeals, an agency of the Justice Department, is now due to hear the case, and has promised to rule on Al-Najjar's release by 7 p.m. on Thursday, said Sami Al-Alian, director of the Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace, which has been fighting for Al-Najjar to be freed.

Al-Najjar, 43, has been held without charges at a federal facility in Bradenton, Florida, since May 1997, when his visa expired. He had been a teacher at the University of South Florida in Tampa, where he lived with his wife and three daughters.

He has denied any support for terrorist groups and claims the financial transfers involved money he was managing for his father and brother.

David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and Al-Najjar's lead attorney, welcomed the decision by Judge Kevin McHugh to release his client on $8,000 bond.

"We are delighted and relieved," he said in a statement. "Mazen Al-Najjar has spent over three years behind bars, despite having never been charged with a single crime, on the basis of secret evidence he has never seen."

Cole could not be reached for comment on the government's requested stay, or the prospects that the immigration appeal board would allow Al-Najjar to be released.

A federal judge ordered McHugh in May to hold a new hearing on Al-Najjar's bail request, ruling that Al-Najjar's rights were violated because he had not been able to see or respond to the secret evidence being used against him.

In an October hearing, INS attorneys said Al-Najjar was linked to Islamic Jihad through his membership in the now-defunct World and Islamic Studies Enterprise, a group that held conferences on Middle East policy in Tampa from 1991-95.

Another member of WISE, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, became the leader of the Islamic Jihad in 1995.

On October 27, McHugh ruled the INS lacked sufficient evidence to continue holding Al-Najjar. The INS later agreed to provide an unclassified summary of their evidence.

In Wednesday's ruling, McHugh wrote that the documents provided by the government failed to provide Al-Najjar with notice of the evidence against him and a meaningful opportunity to defend against that evidence.

"The fact that a person can be held in an American jail for more than three years without charge and without knowing why he is detained should be a wake-up call for all those who love justice," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based Islamic advocacy group.

Civil rights groups said the U.S. government has used secret evidence almost exclusively against Muslims and Arabs.

Hooper said that every time a court has the opportunity to address the use of secret evidence, the practice is found to be unconstitutional and the detainee is released.

The House Judiciary Committee approved legislation banning most uses of secret evidence in immigration cases this year, but the bill never made it to the floor for a full House vote.

Lawmakers have vowed to reintroduce the measure in the next session.

Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush said during a debate with Democrat Al Gore that he favored legislation to protect Arabs in the United States from being profiled as extremists by government agencies.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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